


In Remembrance Bear

by Siria



Category: Firefly, Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Fusion, Crossover, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-10-18
Updated: 2006-10-18
Packaged: 2017-10-03 19:36:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,976
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21508
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Siria/pseuds/Siria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A five things fusion with <i>Firefly</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Remembrance Bear

**Author's Note:**

> With thanks to randomeliza and amireal for beating this into shape at various stages. Written for pentapus.

**1.**

For John, the battle for Serenity Valley takes place in the air. Weeks of nothing but indigo sky, the brown earth of the valley so, so far below him, only a few hours of rest snatched here and there before they were off again. It should be exhausting and repetitive, hours spent circling and circling, escorting the larger bombers in case the poor _hwoon dahn_ on the ground actually pulled together enough resources to aim a salvo at them. It should be, it is; but up there, fourth hour out of seven, John can't think of anywhere else he'd rather be.

Later, when it is all done, and the Independents are routed, word comes in over the Cortex that the day has been declared the first annual Unification Day. Half the squadron are celebrating it even before they hear the official announcement, high on dearly-won victory and cheaply-bought rotgut, sharing around the couple of whores Mitch had brought back from the other side of Hera who were more than willing to play at being a Companion if the money was right.

John is assigned to prisoner processing.

"I hate to put it on you, Sheppard," the commander says, "You did well out there—probably a promotion in it for you. Yang might even reassign you back to Sihnon—but we're understaffed at the best of times out here, and this just can't wait."

"Yes, sir," John says, back straight and aching, "Thank you, sir."

Down in the holding cells, it's dark—gunmetal walls, tired people in dirty brown clothes, mud all over them, everywhere, like Serenity Valley is still trying to drag them down.

John stands in the doorway and calls out names, checks off boxes on the pages in his clipboard, good old-fashioned paper bureaucracy that assigns the 17th Independent Regiment to A (Holding Cells), B (Interrogation), C (Infirmary), D (Morgue) or E (Corpse rotting somewhere on the battlefield). So many of them dead already, their names met with nothing but silence. Some not able to look him in the eye when their name is called, some who glare at him with impotent and frustrated rage. One of them spits at him when he passes, the froth white and obscene-looking on John's carefully-polished shoes.

When he calls out the name Teyla Emmagan, a small woman walks forward, slowly, favouring her left leg. She's younger than John took her for, at first, a lieutenant's patch on the sleeve of her coat and dark circles beneath her eyes.

She looks him in the eye when she passes, and John sees no resignation there, no overwhelming rage. He sees assessment, there, a few seconds worth of scrutiny followed by a look that says she knows him, knows who he is, completely. John clutches the clipboard tighter, hands white-knuckled; he watches her as she leaves the room, and tries not to think of the meaning of her smile.

**2.**

John can lose himself in the rhythm of life on Elysium, sometimes. Ploughing follows harvest follows planting, mild wet summers changing into bitter winter over and over. It's not a life he was raised to, but it's a life he has come to know, farming on a planet on the very edge of the Core, living on the edge of a community of Old Europeans. He likes them, but lives apart from them. He lets them try to live a lifestyle that died five centuries ago, while he tries to make his own, both of them as apart from the Alliance as they can manage and still live in peace.

Sometimes he spends festivals with Radek and his family. Maria complains he is growing thin out there by himself, and feeds him til he groans, and beyond it; little Eliska teaches him how to dance with her, alternately blushing when she places her hand in his, and giggling wildly at the clumsy placement of his feet. Around the fire, later, when John lets the poker drop on his foot, he has to laugh at Radek's suggestion that John's ability to swear in Czech is maybe becoming as good as his ability to lapse into Mandarin or Cantonese.

"I'm getting old, Radek," he says whenever Radek brings it up. "Stuff from before like that, it's just getting hard to remember."

John's not really lying when he says it—it's just that, like all things, it's getting harder to forget. He doesn't have to look at a calendar to know when U-Day falls; he knows it, every year, spends the day hacking at the stony ground at the edge of his land, sinking his hands deep into the clean, dark earth and refusing to look up at the sky.

**3\. **

John's not on the Alliance wanted list. Even now, his father still has some pull, and so as far as the official record on the Cortex is concerned, John C. Sheppard Jr, spent the war years doing something safe and nondescript and civilian on a backwater moon. John could go anywhere in the Core, if he wanted. Go back to Sihnon, to his family, and play the prodigal son returned. Settle down on Beaumonde. Work his way through every credit to his name on Londinium, and then some.

John stays away from the Core. There's nothing there he wants or needs, and the Black's always been more of a home to him, anyway.

Stays away from it mostly; but there's still one day a year when he and Ronon will shrug on the long, leather dusters which are that particular shade of brown which will always mean _qu ni de_ to the Alliance, step off their ship and into the white-hot noon of a Core world, and head for the staunchest Alliance bar they can find.

Later, when they are back out of the world, up in the black, ship humming sweetly around them, Teyla plucks shards of glass from Ronon's forehead, a long and vicious splinter from John's forearm, washes other people's blood from their knuckles. She purses her lips and tries for stern disapproval, wondering aloud how trouble manages to find her husband and his friends with such annual regularity, as if she didn't already know the answer.

"Honestly, Teyla," John says, voice as free of laughter as he can possibly make it, with that light in her eyes and that smirk on Ronon's face, "I just do not see these things coming."

**4\. **

"Jumper class?" the mechanic says, running one hand along the ship's hull as if he can tell what ails her through the scars and dents in her skin. "God, those are older than those Firefly-class wrecks that are still limping around. How did you even manage to get this thing out of the museum in the first place, let alone land it, she must be held together with—what is this _go se_?" he says, voice muffled but clearly rising as he slips underneath the ship entirely, "Who installed this? Who thought this would be a good thing to—oh, for—"

His voice trails off a little, muffled, and John is left staring at a pair of boots sticking out from beneath the hull of his ship, one foot twitching in time with what is clearly one hell of a tirade. "So you'll fix it, then?" John says, amused despite himself, amused despite the sweaty grasp he has on the handful of credits that he's carefully horded against something like this happening. He knows it's nowhere near enough to fix the ship, probably not even enough for him to think of hiring a proper mechanic like this guy. It's more than he can fix by himself, though, and if he doesn't have his ship—well.

No answer, at first; just a loud clanking noise before the mechanic pulls himself out from beneath the ship and looks up at him. There's a smear of grease along one cheekbone, another along one stretch of lightly freckled arm, and his eyes are very blue. "It's not like I've got anything better to do today," he says finally, grudgingly, like John's won some enormous concession from him.

John arches both eyebrows. "Unification Day today. You mean you're not going to be downtown having fun at the parade with all the other good folk of Liann Jiun City?"

"What, you mean standing around with a couple of hundred slack-jawed yokels while they drink bad beer, sweat profusely and belch to a degree even _I_ find disgusting—and note that I do not necessarily state that those events will occur in that order, _or_ that those actions are in any way limited by age or gender—and swear allegiance to a governmental system whose ineptness and bureaucratic stupidity they cannot possibly grasp, while I feel precious, precious brain cells commit suicide out of sheer terror?"

The man snorts, standing up and brushing ineffectually at the dirt-stains on the ass of his trousers, succeeding only in leaving a trail of oil that runs from his tool-belt all the way down one thigh. John tries not to look, tries his very best to look away.

"So that's a no, then," he says. He's not heard someone that in love with his own voice in a while; life on board a ship, months with only Teyla and Ronon and Radek for company, had made him grow used to speech as a tool, something to be used for a specific reason—not like this. It's different. John kind of likes it.

"That's a no," the man confirms, then tilts his to the side and looks at John, curiosity making his eyes bright. "Why, what were you planning on doing?"

"Bar fight, actually," John says, then "No, seriously" and "_Hey_!" when the man bursts out laughing, loud and genuine, leaning against the ship's hull and making helpless little gestures with his hands.

_What the hell_, John thinks, sticking his hands in his pockets and grinning back. Maybe he'll break with tradition, just this once, and stay here instead. It's not like he had any fixed plans, this guy is still grinning at him in a way that makes John smile back, and if there's one thing the war taught him, it's that a fuck's as good as a fight any day.

**5.**

Every year, regular as clockwork and twice as silent, Teyla clears out the ship's common room. Takes out the sharp edges and the year's accumulated detritus, stores things away, back where they belong. Scraps of paper sorted and placed back on Rodney's bunk, bits of engine and scrap metal back to Radek in the engine room, dozens of paper planes and origami birds that she strings in great lines all around John's seat in the cockpit.

She and Miko leave the room tidy behind them, cleaned out but for the blankets stacked thick on the couches that line the room, the shot glasses and bottles of _bá¡ijiú"_ and whiskey and vodka that sit on the table, the bottles of water and flasks of coffee left as a reminder next to them.

Sometime around three in the morning, as they reckon time in the Black, John almost always finds himself lying on his back on the deck, feeling the hum of his ship along his spine, burn of whiskey in his gut; while scattered around him, Radek cries and Ronon laughs and Rodney tells some long, rambling anecdote, hands waving in the air as he sketches out something that probably never happened and Miko and Teyla let them be. That hour of the morning, he finds he can let himself think about how he got here, how he gathered this family around him, and not regret it. Can let him think of that one great loss, and so many small victories that have followed it. It's worth the headache, come morning.

  
_Art by [Pentapus](http://pentapus.livejournal.com)_


End file.
